The contract killing of a Kent Woodlands man by his wife and her lover in 1991 is being turned into programming for the cable network Investigation Discovery.

“It just had a lot of the elements that fit with the kind of stories that we wanted to tell,” said Steve Katz, the executive producer overseeing the project.

Rich McDonald in 1979. (Courtesy of McDonald Pest Control)

“The particular series we’re producing now all the stories revolve around love interests and how the spark of love can lead to something else sometimes.”

The program is expected to run sometime this summer as part of the network’s “Primal Instinct” series.

Ann McDonald and paramour Al Braunberger were sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Rich McDonald, her husband. The victim operated a pest control business in San Rafael and had parlayed his business income into a fortune in real estate holdings.

Rich McDonald was Ann McDonald’s fifth husband. She had her own money at the time of his death, more than $1 million and much of it inherited from her father.

The couple were 57 at the time of the murder. Braunberger, who was nearly 10 years older, was a business broker making about $50,000 a year.

Ann McDonald and Braunberger were convicted on evidence supplied by one of the two men they hired to kill Rich McDonald. Manuel Martinez, a Vietnam War veteran with a history of cocaine and alcohol abuse, testified he agreed to kill Rich McDonald for $35,000.

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Martinez, who was granted immunity by the prosecution, also helped police secure incriminating video and audio tapes of Ann McDonald and Braunberger discussing payment for the crime with him.

Martinez said he first tried to shoot McDonald but the gun malfunctioned. Then he and his accomplice, Larry Smith, an unemployed Oakland laborer, beat the victim with fireplace tools.

When that didn’t seem to do the job, they strangled and suffocated him. Meanwhile, Ann McDonald was waiting in a nearby bathroom urging them to hurry up.

Ann McDonald died at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla in 2013 at the age of 79. She supplied an epitaph appropriate for a true crime story, however, during a prison interview with the Independent Journal in 1993.

“I feel fortunate in one way,” Ann said. “I know I’ve been very loved by two men in my life — no matter how the story ends.”

Smith was sentenced to two years in prison.

Braunberger is no longer listed as an inmate at the state prison system’s website, which does not specify whether he died or was paroled.

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